Billy de la Rosa
Billy de la Rosa, also known by his nom de guerre of Two Gun Billy or Two Gun Billy de la Rosa is a young man in his prime. A gunfighter with eleven notches on his revolvers, Billy has lived a short and violent life of excitement and adventure in his home state of Tamaulipas, Mexico and has proven to be one of the most notable and one of the quickest of the new breed of gunslingers, desperados, and pistoleros that have taken to calling the former Mexican state of Tamaulipas their home. Biography Early Life Billy de la Rosa was born on July 21st, 2258 to Santiago and Susan de la Rosa. His father was a Mexican prospector and vaquero and his mother was a Texan bartender who owned the only cantina in Nuevo Progreso. Being an open town, life was rough in Nuevo Progreso and no place for a child to grow up in a healthy manner. Most days were alright, however when comancheros came to town to spend the money they had looted at his mother's cantina the young Billy had to be kept in the cellar of the building to prevent him from witnessing the guarenteed murder or two that came with a night of comancheros partying. Being the son of a Mexican and a Texan, he became fluent in English and Spanish and literate in both as well. From an early age he became intrigued with stories of gunslingers of old that he read about in a book he found in the cantina and he became fascinated with the gunslingers of his day that he heard about in stories from cantina patrons. Men like Johnny Ringo, Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, and John Wesley Hardin from the old American West and the pistoleros of post-apocalyptic Tamaulipas like Frank Turner, Esteban Ignacio Chavez, Salvador Miranda, and Dante Cavalcante. He often daydreamed of being a pistolero and growing up his favorite toys were a pair of wooden revolvers that his father carved for him while he was picking through ruins near Ciudad Victoria. He would tuck them into his pants and walk around town shooting it out with invisible posses of lawmen and gangs of rustlers and idolized the life of living by the gun, believing it to be a romantic life of adventure as portrayed in dime novels. With his father always away scavenging or herding cattle, Billy had no strong male role model in his life and developed his understanding of masculinity from hearing stories of gunslingers and from seeing comancheros when they rode into town. From the age of nine or ten his idea of a real man was a gun-toting, rot-gut drinking, poker-playing, cigar-smoking, desperado whose only response to an insult was a pull of a revolver's trigger. Early Teenage Years When he turned fourteen he began to try to imitate this idea of manhood and masculinity, he learned from a drunk former vaquero in his mother's cantina how to play poker and took to wearing a pair or .32 revolvers around his mother's cantina which he practiced with on a daily basis, becoming a fine marksman in a short amount of time thanks to a natural talent, steady hand, and the fact that he was ambidextrous. When the comancheros came to to town in his teens he was allowed to stay up with his mother and served drinks and manned the bar. He saw more of his role models, one comanchero in particular, Diego Campo who he personally saw a kill a man for accusing him of cheating in poker. Billy always tried to serve drinks to Campo whenever his hero rode into town, he made small talk with the bandito and viewed him as a role model. Billy wanted to join one of the comanchero gangs that often started in Nuevo Progreso before going into Texas to cause trouble. He was fifteen when he told his mother of his desire to be a comanchero and his mother agreed to help pay for some medicine, bullets, a rifle, and some leather armor for him in the hopes that her son would bring back some money to help keep the cantina operational. It was shortly after this that his father, who always came back in the winter when the cattle drives were over did not return with the drive in his saddle, rather draped over the saddle. It turned out that his father had been killed when he fell off his horse and was stampeded by beeves, his death devastated his mother but Billy didn't feel too bad. His father had never been there for him, staying in Nuevo Progreso only one or two months a year and Billy's bond with his father had never really existed. His mother however was devastated and tried to keep her son with her, not letting him join the raiding party of Diego Campo as Billy had planned to do. Billy was furious and crushed but stayed, serving drinks to patrons. A year later however in 2274 when Diego Campo returned with loot and had a wild night at the cantina in Nuevo Progreso, Billy's dream came true, but turned out not to be what he wanted. Young Billy hadn't even been sixteen for a week when Campo and his men walked into the cantina and started drinking. Diego, who thought that Billy hadn't rode with him into Texas to loot and plunder out of cowardice proceeded to mock Billy for being a coward and wearing an apron, after calling him a waitress he tripped Billy, forcing him to drop the mugs of beer he was carrying. Furious and humiliated, Billy rose to his feet and looked at the man who had been his role model and imitated him. He drew his one of his revolvers and shot Diego Campo at point blank range in the eye, killing him instantly. Campo's gang instantly stood up and the four men drew guns on Billy who was saved when his mother pulled out a shotgun from under the bar and threatened to blow the gang to oblivion if they hurt her son. The comancheros backed off and left but made it clear that it wasn't over. The next day his mother came to him with a lever-action .30-30 rifle, ammunition, a pack of food, and most of her saved money and told Billy to leave town, fearing that if her son stayed that he would be shot down by comancheros from Campo's gang seeking revenge. Billy did and left Nuevo Progreso never to return and began his new life as a drifter. Early Career Fleeing Nuevo Progreso, Billy went southeast towards Ramirez. He found it hard in the country but managed to make it to Ramirez by joining up with a traveling caravan and lying, claiming he was a professional mercenary of twenty years. While most would have doubted him the caravan's boss, Juanito Flores took him aboard in a heartbeat seeing how he had just lost one of his men to a comanchero raid and was still in comanchero territory. Billy accompanied the Flores Caravan all the way to Ramirez without incident, eating the rations brought for the man he replaced. When he arrived in Ramirez the caravan sold off their goods, two pack mules worth of mezcal and tequila and then Flores paid young Billy and the three other employees of the caravan in the saloon which treated the booze-running caravans with free drinks. In Not having to pay for drinks, Billy began to gamble his money which while less than most of the others was still respectable at one hundred and forty pesos. He soon turned the one hundred and forty into three hundred and had a poker showdown with another man who when Billy went all in had no other choice but to bet his pistols, a pair of finely customized .30-30 Caballero revolvers. Billy accepted the guns as acceptable collateral and played his hand and won the two guns and the gunbelt. It was during that same night however that he would have to use the guns when three men with familar faces walked into the saloon looking for Billy. The men were affiliated with Diego Campo's old gang and still seeking revenge for the death of their boss. They confronted Billy who was cornered in a booth, drinking with a young woman. Boozed up and not wanting to be killed by the men or disgraced in front of the saloon's patrons and the young woman Billy warned them to leave before they were hurt, drawing laughter from the three men. A moment later one of them reached for his 10mm pistol, but Billy with his young lightning hands were faster and he fired two shots from each of his guns into the man, shooting him four times within two inches of the heart in just a second and a quarter. Immediatly following this he shot the man to the dead man's left in the side before the first man had fallen to the ground, incapacitating him but not killing him. The last comanchero instantly threw his hands and then was directed by Billy to throw his pistol on the ground with his left hand, which he did. Billy then had the comanchero carry his bleeding friend out of the saloon and gave the bartender ten pesos for 'the mess' as he put it and walked out. Billy's display of quick-draw rapid fire death greatly impressed the entire bar and Juanito Flores who took to calling him 'Two Gun Billy', a name that stuck. The next day Juanito found Billy in an alleyway with a hangover and asked Billy where he learned to shoot the way he did and asked why the comancheros had come looking. Billy admitted that he was only sixteen, the man who had shot Diego Campo, and confessed to being self taught. Flores tried to get Billy to join him on another caravan run, however Billy declined to join him as he wanted to stay in Ramirez. Billy went back to the saloon in the afternoon and proceeded to rent a room for a week and lived in the bar, playing poker all day and participating in shooting contests with other patrons. It did not take long however for Billy's money to run out and eight days after shooting the comancheros he found himself broke. But not for long as on the ninth day his career as a mercenary began when he was contacted by a representative of the Vidal Family, one of two families feuding for control of Ramirez. Involvement in the Molina-Vidal Feud The man who met him had heard of 'Two Gun' Billy's display in the saloon and knew him to be reponsible for killing Ramirez. His name was Sammy Vidal, a member of the family by law who came to Billy with an offer for mercenary work. The work involved fighting the Molina family, a clan of cattle ranchers whose cowhands helped police Ramirez with lynch-law tactics. The Vidals, a family who owned Ramirez's largest cantina which also served as a cardhouse and brothel wished to have the town declared 'open' to comancheros like Nuevo Progreso was, ensuring that there would be a rise in profits but a major rise in crime. The Vidals were offering to provide a police force with their mercenaries if the town was opened to all establishments providing they pay a fee that the comanchero money that the establishments would earn would cover. The disagreement over how to run the town had turned bloody about six months before Billy arrived when a member of the Vidal family along with three henchmen shot a Molina who was gambling in the Vidal's cantina. Since then the Molinas had three Vidal mercenaries and the Vidals had hung a vaquero from the Molina ranch from the balcony of their cantina. The Vidal's offered Billy five hundred pesos to help hunt down Ramon Molina, the fastest gun the Molina family had and heir to the family who had shot one of the Vidal family mercenaries. Two Gun Billy joined a posse of five other Vidal mercenaries to raid the camp that Ramon was staying at, a small shack on the edge of Molina property near a stream that the Molinas watered their cattle at. The posse found the shack and attacked it however Ramon, who was a fast shot and deadly shot with his Gaucho revolver managed to shoot two of the mercenaries and then shoot Billy in the chest, lodging a bullet in his rib. Ramon prepared to finish the bleeding Billy off, however it was then that his sister who was also present in the shack stopped her brother, pleading for the life of the handsome young man who she knew to be a newcomer to the feud and not a longtime Vidal supporter. Ramon hestitated but obliged his sister who helped Ramon remove his bullet and took Billy back to the Molina ranch house where she nursed Billy to health for seven months, with Billy flirting with her on a daily basis, something that she, Sara Molina took kindly to. Personality Billy de la Rosa is a man of both morality and violence. Strange as this sounds it is the only observable truth, he follows a code of morality and masculinity that often coincide. In terms of morality Billy has never shot an unarmed man, stole from another man, raped a woman, cheated anyone, or attacked with lethal or non-lethal means anyone who hasn't done anything to him. Being a man of this moral code he has refused to do mercenary work for any employer who would have him break that code and rather will side against them as he did in the feud between the Vidal and Molina families where the Vidals tried to employ him and he ended up siding with the Molinas. However while his moral code is respectable and admirable when compared to that of other pistoleros and gunslingers operating in Tamaulipas, his strong belief in a code of honor and masculinity is brash and comes with a hair-trigger. He believes greatly in proving himself to be a 'real man' as he puts it and does not want to be underestimated or thought less of due to his young age. Emulating gunslingers of the Old West and pistoleros of Tamaulipas, Billy has developed his definition of masculinity to be a man who is free, deadly, and who refuses to be cheated, insulted or wronged. His first killing demonstrated this when he shot Diego Campo down for insulting and humiliating him which in his mind proved himself to be a man and not a 'coward' who would be afraid to respond back to insult. Additionally his gunslinger code of honor and manhood includes a bravery tenant, he believes that backing down from any fight is a sign of cowardice and makes himself look like a weakling, therefor he will never back down from a duel when challenged to one, as seen by his killing of Bad Tom Baxter and the Green Laser Kid, both of whom challenged the young gunslinger to a duel. Ultimately while there is some good in Two Gun Billy's personality there is also a generous heap of unpredictable danger. He refuses to allow any man to strike a blow to his ego and any insult he will have no trouble coming back to with lead from his six-guns. While good at heart, he is practically blinded by his egotistical code of manhood which idolizes and worships taking nothing from anyone and living by the guns he wears low and tied down on his hips. Appearance Two Gun Billy dresses rather simply always wearing his pair of heeled boots, brown canvas pants, a brown leather belt, his drab cream and black plaid shirt, a rugged brown leather vest, a faded yellow neckerchief, and a tan Stetson hat. On his hips slightly below his belt he wears a black double gunbelt that holsters two customized .30-30 Caballero revolvers. The revolvers are just as much jewelry as they are the tools of his trade and he has had them outfitted with black bison horn grips from the before the war and a dark blued finish which he keeps up by polishing the revolvers everyday. As for his body he looks more like he was born north of the border than south of it. He has tan yet Caucasian skin, unkempt brown hair, and blue eyes. Even though he is in his early twenties he hasn't very much capability to grow facial hair and thus always shaves it down. He is shorter than most measuring only five feet and nine inches and being skinny as well has ensured that the only thing scary about him are the two guns he wears on his hips. On terms of muscles he has little and is rather incapable against an average man in a fistfight, just one reason he only ever takes his guns off when he sleeps. Equipment Billy is a man who travels light at all times, on his person he only carries his clothes, wallet, a pocketkknife in his boot, a small canteen which he wears under his shirt around his neck held up by a strip of leather and his guns. His guns are a pair of .30-30 Caballero revolvers, probably the most popular handgun in all of Mexico when the war started. However while Caballero revolvers are common, Billy's are not. The guns are blued to a nice black sheen which he shines daily and have black bison horn grips on them. Their barrels are seven and a half inches long instead of the regular five inches and the guns have a hair trigger on them in addition to having a heavier frame made of steel alloyed with titanium to offset recoil better. Besides carrying very little on his person he also carries very little on his horse, Susanna. Besides a saddle there is only a rifle scabbard attached to his saddle that holsters a .30-30 lever-action rifle which he keeps to give him a long range weapon in the same caliber as his pistol. Additionally he keeps a sleeping bag, some flint, and enough food and water to last him a week in a pack attached to the saddle. Besides that he has nothing but the clothes on his back, ensuring that his horse is always light enough to outrun a posse or lynching party on his trail.